


When All Else Fails, There's Always Fucking

by Aliax



Category: A Land Fit for Heroes - Richard Morgan
Genre: Angry Sex, Canon Divergence, Character study through porn, Fucking Instead Of Fighting, Hand Jobs, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Maybe-It's-Not-Hate-Sex Sex, Smut Swap Treat, Very Cautiously Hopeful Ending, thigh-fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:43:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliax/pseuds/Aliax
Summary: During Ringil and Seethlaw's canonical argument in the marsh in Ennishmin, Seethlaw makes one different decision, and Ringil finds himself faced with someone who neither reacts to insults nor seems bothered by threats to his physical safety. Ringil is running out of options, so he grabs onto the only one he knows is guaranteed to reach the dwenda. It works... but it also ends up reaching parts of Ringil he would rather have kept on ignoring...





	When All Else Fails, There's Always Fucking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/gifts).



> I _think_ this fits the "Maybe-It's-Not-Hate-Sex Sex" tag? I apologize if it's not what you were wishing for, and I hope you'll like it anyway!

_"Hey, we're fucking talking, aren't we?"_

Ringil had almost shouted it, to hide how much of a lie it was. They were only talking because there was nothing else he could do, not without his sword or his dagger. He was stuck listening to Seethlaw's explanations, and pointing out the holes in them, with no hope anymore that it would sway the dwenda, or change his mind.

And then Seethlaw was turning this around, and arguing that, "You know, Gil, I had thought you of all people might be able to understand. From what I know of you—", and it was all Ringil could do to corral his fury, to keep it mostly restrained inside himself, to only let thin strands of it filter out through gritted teeth as he replied.

"You know nothing of me. _Nothing._ You've fucked me, that's all." And once again, he was aware, on some remote level, that he was lying, but once again, he didn't care. Seethlaw _did_ know him better than most people. Seethlaw was the only one, for example, who'd ever pushed him to explain why he cared to save children who would grow up to condemn him for his choice of bed partners. But Ringil couldn't allow this to matter, not now. Now, only the anger mattered - the anger, the hurt, the hatred. And so he went looking for the words which would - perhaps, maybe, hopefully - hurt Seethlaw back. "Well, that's a crowded hole you're in, darling." And then, with a savage pleasure at throwing the dwenda's words back into his face, "And us humans, we're a lying, dissembling bunch, remember. Doesn't pay to trust us between the sheets any more than anywhere else."

It didn't work. The barbs didn't go through; Seethlaw didn't recoil. If anything, he sounded frighteningly convinced when he replied quietly, "You're wrong, Gil. I know you better than you know yourself."

"Oh, _lizardshit!_ " The protest flew out of Ringil's mouth before he could even think it. It was a reflex, born of so many years of having to hide entire parts of who and what he was from everybody around him. He wasn't even sure just how much his mother or his best friends had ever been able or allowed to see, or for that matter, how much _he_ knew himself.

But once again, Seethlaw wasn't deterred. They were talking, weren't they? And so he talked. "I've seen you in the marches, Gil. I see how you handled yourself there." And now he was reaching for Ringil, seizing him by the shoulders, and Ringil felt something swaying deep inside him. " _I see what the akiya saw, Gil._ I see what you could become, if you'd only let yourself."

_Danger!_ Ringil had to put a stop to this. There was too much truth to this, and it was a truth he didn't want to acknowledge, a truth he didn't even want to allow to _exist_ at all. And so he broke the dwenda's hold on him, both physical and verbal. "I've done all the becoming I'm going to in this life." Yes, this was better: utterly false - how _could_ he know what he would be ten years from now? - but far more acceptable. He pushed on. "I've seen enough to know where it all goes." War, war, and more war. People dying, everywhere, endlessly, and _this_ at least he did know for sure he wanted no part of anymore.

And now it was time to put an end to the discussion itself, because even talking wasn't safe, not with Seethlaw. It had never been - talking was how they'd ended up fucking that first time, after all - and it certainly wasn't right this moment. "Now you made me a fucking promise. Are you going to keep it?" _Give me Sherin, and get out of my life, or let me get out of yours, or... or whatever! Just let me get away from here, from you, for just a few days or weeks!_ And if that wasn't possible, then, "Or do you want to give me back my sword and we'll finish this thing the way we started it?" Before the fucking, before the talking, there had been the fighting, and right now, Ringil was more than ready to go back to it. He almost hoped Seethlaw would choose that option, so badly did he want to just _fucking kill something,_ anything!

They stared at each other, and Ringil, as always, felt himself falling into the dwenda's empty eyes. He ignored it, waited.

Blinked when Seethlaw shrugged, and said, as though it were a matter of no importance, "Your sword is where it's always been, on your back. And your dagger is in your belt, as well."

Oh... Right. Ringil remembered now, remembered _again_ , that Seethlaw had never taken his weapons away from him. He'd only taken the _memory_ of them away.

He raised his hand, slowly. This time, unlike on the Muhn-lit beach, he had no doubt about what he would find over his shoulder; he could _feel_ the weight of the Ravensfriend on his back. He could feel it shivering, waiting for his grasp, eager for another chance to chop the dwenda standing there into pieces. He felt a grin come on his lips as he wrapped his hand around the sword's grip and pulled it out of its scabbard.

_Now_ they were "talking" all right, in the one language he knew best!

He frowned in annoyance when Seethlaw didn't imitate him, didn't reach for his own sword, whose pommel Ringil could now see jutting over his shoulder. He clenched his teeth and spat, "Isn't this what you want!?"

Seethlaw tilted his head, almost as though he were examining some curious animal he'd never seen before. "No. This is what _you_ want, Gil. This is what you've always wanted, from the very beginning." There was no accusation, no animosity, and no derision either, in the musical voice. Seethlaw was just stating a fact, and from his detached attitude, one could have been forgiven for thinking that this fact didn't concern him in the least.

But it did, and it rankled that he should seem to care so little when Ringil cared so fucking much! Ringil renewed his grip on the Ravensfriend and pulled its tip up until it pointed straight at Seethlaw's chest. "I'm going to kill you. Doesn't that bother you just a little!?"

Seethlaw sighed, closed his eyes, shrugged again. There was a chasm in his blank gaze when he opened his eyes again and stared at Ringil, and it stole Ringil's breath away. And there was a quiet resignation in his voice when he explained, "If not now, then later. It was never in my power to stop this chain of events, though I was not aware of it when I foolishly promised not to kill you."

_Promised? To whom?_ Ringil ignored the question; he probably already knew the answer anyway, and more importantly, Seethlaw was finally moving. Ringil watched as the dwenda walked a few paces away, and crouched in front of the head on a tree stump Ringil had pointed to earlier. The white fingers reached out; it looked for all the world like a caress when they trailed down a muddy, tear-streaked cheek - and Ringil found himself having to stomp down on a savage instinct to grab the dwenda's hand and wrench it away from the poor thing. _You have no right!_

"You don't know her, do you?" Seethlaw asked over his shoulder, just loudly enough for Ringil to hear him. The question took Ringil by complete surprise. Luckily, Seethlaw didn't wait for an answer. "Yet you would fight me for her." The dwenda shook his head, stood back up, turned to face Ringil again. "I should have known."

_Should have known... Should have known what?_ Ringil hated the certainty in the dwenda's voice. He hated this feeling that was filling him, that he was standing on the edge of a precipice and his feet were slipping and—

Seethlaw took a single step towards Ringil, repeated, "I should have known. You told me so yourself, after all. You told me you fought the Lizards for the children." _The children...?_ The dwenda gestured to the head behind him, and then to a few others around them. "You don't know these people. For all you know, they would cheer if you were put to the cage. Maybe they would denounce you and your crooked ways to the Chancellery for a small reward. Or maybe, if they'd had any, they would have thrown their own sons or daughters out onto the street if they'd turned out to be an abomination like you."

... Slipping. Ringil was slipping, ever faster, and it scared and angered him in equal measures. He was slipping, because Seethlaw was right, and they both knew it. In fact, the dwenda knew it so well, he didn't even seem to expect a reply from Ringil. Instead, he continued, "But you don't _care._ " A quiet, yet firm assertion, pronounced as his calm gaze fearlessly held Ringil's. "You don't care who they were. You don't care what they might have taught the children in their lives. You don't care how they might have treated you or people like you."

A shake of the head, and the ghost of a smile on the white lips. "You don't even see the children they once were. No, what you see, is the children they _might have been,_ captured and terrorised by an unfeeling, cruel enemy." And this time the corners of the long mouth did lift, in a soft, so soft smile. "And you will always fight for _those_ children."

Ringil strangled himself on a snort. He was flailing inside, trying to regain his footing, to get back to some safer terrain. He managed to put just enough derision in his retort to hide the turmoil growing inside him. "That would make you a Lizard, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if you were one."

Again, it didn't work. Instead of taking offence at the comparison, Seethlaw simply cocked his head once more. "Am I not? Am I not some inhuman, uncaring enemy, which stalks your lands killing or torturing all that stands in its path?"

Ringil swallowed again; this... this was not how it was supposed to go! It was all true, but Seethlaw wasn't the one who should be saying it!

And yet the dwenda continued, as lightly as ever. "Am I not an invader, intent on stealing humanity's world, even if that means eradicating humanity itself?" He took another couple of steps, stopped a pace away from Ringil, to his side, close enough to touch the Ravensfriend if he just extended his arm a little. "Tell me, Ringil Eskiath, what should make me any different from one of the Scaled Folk in your eyes?"

... And falling now.

Falling and slipping, forever. Falling into Seethlaw's deep, dark gaze. Slipping onto his own muddled hatred, inside his own hopelessly confused mind. Ringil grasped for the first rock he could find, spat the first words that came to his mind out of a suddenly dry mouth. "Well, I've never fucked a Lizard, for starters." Realised too late how fundamentally unsuitable they were to the situation.

Seethlaw's eyebrows rose in surprise. "What difference does that make? If a Lizard had offered, and if it had had a prick, and a mouth and an arse to fuck, would you not have taken the opportunity? You said it yourself: it was just fucking." And now, finally, his calm composure cracked. Oh, not much! But his mouth bent as though he'd just swallowed something unpleasant, and there was definitely bitterness in his voice when he concluded flatly, "It meant nothing. It was just a pair of crowded holes we were both in."

Ringil felt the pain coming, closing in on him, from somewhere he couldn't see and thus couldn't deflect. It was one thing to hurl those words at Seethlaw to hurt him; it was another entirely to have the dwenda throw them back in all seriousness. Ringil had been lying, but Seethlaw wasn't, and that made an intolerable difference.

Desperately, in the last moments before the full strength of that truth hit him, Ringil tried to turn it aside with yet another lie. And because in such situations, the best defence was a good offence, he let go of the Ravensfriend with one hand, reached forward, grabbed a fistful of Seethlaw's shirt, and pulled him even closer. His voice slithered out of tight jaws, like a snake. "So that's how it was, huh? You promised you wouldn't kill me, so you grabbed me by the prick instead and toyed with me?"

And this time, finally, it worked! Seethlaw's anger flared in response to Ringil's utterly unfair accusation, even if he made no move to free himself from Ringil's hold. "So it seems your answer to my question about whether I used you so ill, was yes after all."

... Ringil saw red then, as fury, despair, and agony imploded all at once in his mind and chest.

Because no, Seethlaw hadn't used him ill. No, Seethlaw hadn't toyed with him, and Ringil refused to let it be said that he'd ever _truly_ accused the dwenda of such a thing. Fighting lie with lie, and receiving lie for lie in return, that was something Ringil knew how to manage. It was something he had learnt at his mother's knee, and then again and again from so many other teachers. He could do it in his sleep. It was natural; it was easy - to him. But Seethlaw didn't follow these rules, had never followed them, and so Ringil owed him the truth in return, except he fucking _didn't know how to do that!_

So he did the only thing he could think of, that didn't involve skewering Seethlaw onto the Ravensfriend or slitting his throat with the dragon tooth dagger.

He kissed him.

Hard. Deep. Unforgivingly. He pulled him in, moved his hand into his hair and made a fist there to hold him in place. When Seethlaw growled and opened his mouth wider, Ringil let go of the Ravensfriend altogether, and slid his newly-freed hand behind and down and under - behind Seethlaw's back, under his belt, inside his breeches and underwear, until Ringil's fingers could take hold of one firm buttock into a punishing grip.

Seethlaw groaned again, pushed his body flushed against Ringil's, and drove his hips into Ringil's - and sure enough, there was already a tell-tale bulge growing there. Ringil felt himself harden in response, shoved his tongue further into the dwenda's mouth, gathering that taste, so alien and so familiar all at once. Inside Seethlaw's breeches, he moved his hand and slid his middle finger into the crack of the tight arse, went looking for the hole there, heard Seethlaw grunt when he found it, felt him shiver when he pressed against it.

_Crowded hole, huh? Maybe, but right here, right now, it's mine!_

In an instant, he whipped his hands out of Seethlaw's breeches and hair, and wrapped them around his upper arms instead. He pushed the dwenda away, just far enough to speak, and he heard the lust thickening his own voice when he asked, "Private place around here?"

Seethlaw blinked at him a couple of times, mouth open around fast, rough pants. And then he gathered his wits about him again, jerked his chin in the direction of the slave stables. "The last building is still unoccupied."

Ringil stowed away the unspoken meaning hiding in plain view in those words - more slaves were still to come, more fucking slaves to be _honoured_ \- and instead bent down to retrieve his sword, and stalked through the fence gate. He didn't look back; he knew Seethlaw would follow, and no, he didn't want to think of how he knew that either!

The stalls inside the last stable were empty indeed, but ready to welcome their new occupants. There were mats on the floor, and blankets folded on top of them. Ringil dropped the Ravensfriend in a corner, then unrigged its harness from around his shoulders and pulled the dagger from his belt. Behind him, he heard the door of the stall close. He didn't turn around, just kept on discarding his weapons and then his clothes, angrily, methodically: cloak, boots, breeches, shirt, underwear... One by one, the items piled on the floor, thrown there far more forcefully than necessary, but Ringil didn't know what else to do with the pain-edged irritation running through him, making him want to kill something, making him want to punch something, making him want to—

He turned on the spot. Seethlaw was standing still, naked as well already, his ivory-white skin nearly glowing in the gloom of the stable. He was sporting an erection to match Ringil's, and Ringil suspected that the glower on his face was also a pretty good counterpart to Ringil's own facial expression.

They didn't speak. Ringil closed the gap between them, and then kept going until Seethlaw had his back to the wall of the stall. He grabbed the lithe white waist between his hands, and pushed a thigh deep and rough between the dwenda's legs. He hated that he knew exactly what to do to drive the dwenda wild, and yet his own prick kicked when Seethlaw reacted exactly as he was supposed to, dropping his head back, closing his eyes, and proceeding to shamelessly rut against Ringil's hip.

Ringil licked his way up the long, exposed throat, and grinned ferociously when it dragged a ragged moan out of it. His hands moved too, up along the flaring sides of Seethlaw's wide chest, making him writhe, making his breath lose all rhythm. Ringil flattened himself closer, trapping the dwenda between his body and the hard wall, and was rewarded with the call of his name, in what was both and neither a plea and a demand. The white hands were on his back now, pulling and sliding and searching fruitlessly for something to grab onto.

Seethlaw snarled and his arms clenched tighter, when Ringil pulled his leg back. But then Ringil's hand was on the white prick, and Seethlaw forgot all about the fight in favour of trying to thrust into Ringil's fist. Ringil let him, used the moves to coat the big dick with its own clear, leaking drops, before pushing it firmly down, even as he grabbed and lifted his own balls with his other hand. Seethlaw grunted in surprise when his cock head was slipped within the tight channel between Ringil's thighs - and then it was sliding along Ringil's perineum, all the way to the bottom of his arse, and Seethlaw was letting out a deep, desperate moan.

Ringil received him with a rushing, heady feeling of complete victory when the dwenda threw himself against him, when the long cool hands grabbed Ringil's buttocks in a hold strong enough to bruise, and the beautiful face laid itself on his shoulder. Harsh breaths tickled the hairs on the nape of Ringil's neck as the narrow hips pumped fast, pulling that thick cock almost out of Ringil's legs' grasp on it, only to drive it right back in, gliding on its own wetness and Ringil's sweat. With each stroke, it rubbed against the sensitive skin at the top of the inside of Ringil's thighs, and against the one behind his balls, and Ringil had to focus on controlling the mounting pleasure that ebbing pressure created in his groin and legs. He kept his testicles protected in the cup of one palm, and laid his other hand flat against the wall behind Seethlaw, to keep them both upright. His own prick was trapped between their stomachs, and it rubbed wonderfully against both their skins with each move the dwenda made.

Ringil didn't want to lose himself, not yet. He wanted to take first - or to give, he wasn't sure which one anymore, wasn't even sure there was still a difference at this point. He wanted to force Seethlaw to drown in his own helpless pleasure. He wanted to watch and hear and feel as he pulled the dwenda apart. He had a _point_ to make, even if he couldn't remember what it was.

So on and on they went, Seethlaw's rhythm turning frantic, and Ringil encouraging him now, with nips and licks along the corner of his jaw and on the lobe of his ear, the only places he could reach, at least until Seethlaw raised his head again and fastened his mouth to Ringil's, and opened it wide for Ringil to plunder.

Ringil felt against his lips, more than he heard, the cry Seethlaw released when he came. The entire thin body locked around Ringil's. Ringil could discern, faintly, the dwenda's prick twitching and pulsing between his legs... He held on, didn't give an inch, when Seethlaw abruptly went slack against him. He waited, cock shivering with the need to be stroked, and impossibly sensitive balls still cupped in the hollow of his hand, aching - so sweetly, so unbearably - with the imperious demand to empty themselves now, now, please soon, _please!_

Seethlaw was still panting when he regained his bearing, and withdrew just enough to stare silently at Ringil. There was a question, or maybe a statement, in his glimmer-touched blank gaze, but Ringil couldn't - wouldn't - decipher either. He just glared back, refusing to be the one to say or ask anything. He was no good with words where Seethlaw was concerned; words were useless to them, as they'd so blatantly demonstrated just a few moments ago, outside of this building, so Ringil wasn't going to use them now.

For once, Seethlaw chose against words too. Instead, he slowly, deliberately brought his hands around from Ringil's arse, over his hips, to his stomach. His touch was both firm and almost shy, as though he was worshipping the warm, sweaty skin it ran over, and it sent twinges driving through Ringil's chest and up into his throat, choking him on some emotion he couldn't name. The dark gaze never left Ringil's, never looked anywhere but straight at him, deep and calm and shimmering as a lake under the band at night, and it was by touch only that Seethlaw found Ringil's prick.

He wrapped his long fingers around it, began playing with it in an assured manner that turned Ringil's heart over like it always did, and sent wave after wave of pleasure echoing throughout his body, made him shake, made him pant, made him lose track of anything but the fire in his veins, the familiar hands on his cock touching him in all the right ways, and the dark gaze holding his own - holding him prisoner, holding him upright, holding him in one piece as his orgasm loomed and twisted around him and coiled tight inside him and—

Seethlaw's dark gaze never left him, even when the rest of his vision and the entire world blanked out in an explosion of white-hot, blinding ecstasy.

Seethlaw's dark gaze waited for him, eternally patient, forever accepting, as the shattered remains of his mind and body gathered again, and Ringil remembered who he was, and how to stand up, and how to breathe.

And how to speak.

"Don't make me kill you."

He hadn't known he was going to say that, and he couldn't deny that the whisper was a plea. But he found that he didn't care. He knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that in his normal state, he would never allow himself to think, let alone say, such things, and especially not in such a tone. But they were the truth, all of it, both the words and the begging, and right here and now, he was just unhinged enough, just open enough, to stand uttering them. And so he repeated them, almost desperately and a lot more loudly. "Don't make me kill you!" He took Seethlaw's head between his hands, and held it tight enough that it must have hurt, but the dwenda didn't say anything, didn't do anything, just stared and listened, as Ringil finished, in a panicked, vehement, barely restrained shout. "I don't want to kill you!"

It was the truth. This time, it was the truth. The whole, unacceptable yet undeniable, truth.

Something shattered in Ringil's chest when the dark eyes finally closed. "It can't be helped," Seethlaw whispered back. They were a lake of pure sorrow when they opened again. "It could never be helped. From the moment we met, you were always going to—"

Ringil silenced the dwenda the only way he knew how that didn't involve killing him.

Seethlaw gave into the kiss willingly enough, but he was holding back this time. Ringil had not let him say the words, but the brutal veracity of his statement remained between them.

And that wouldn't do.

Ringil pulled back, then leaned forward again and spoke straight into Seethlaw's ear. "No," he murmured. "I do not accept that." He heard Seethlaw gasp, felt him start. "You will come with me and Sherin to Trelayne. You will talk to me. And we will find a way to deal with this whole giant mess, that doesn't involve either of us killing the other, nor your people killing mine." He waited a moment, listened to Seethlaw's shortened breath, noticed that the dwenda's heart was beating so hard in his chest, it was making them both shake. He trailed his lips against the corner of Seethlaw's jaw, in what was not quite a kiss. "Understood?"

An eternity passed, as he stood there, naked and sweaty, his own semen spreading wetly around where his and Seethlaw's bellies met. An eternity passed, as the scents of spices and mingled body fluids filled his nose, underlaid with the smells of the marsh outside. An eternity passed as he listened to his own pulse in his head, and to Seethlaw's breath, and to the small, undefined noises of the world around them outside of this stall.

An eternity passed, as he held his enemy and lover close, and pressed himself into the embrace, and refused to let go or to be let go.

And then, finally... "Understood." It wasn't even a whisper; it was a miracle that Ringil heard it at all.

But he heard it all right, and so he asked the one question that would seal it all, because the dwenda, in their annoying but irrefutable superiority in that one matter, did not lie. "Do you promise?"

His body heard and felt Seethlaw swallow, and his mind understood the weight of that hesitation. As for whichever part of his soul exploded in rejoicing when Seethlaw replied, "I promise," he certainly didn't care to identify.

Instead, he kissed Seethlaw again, and this time, when the fire woke once more in them both, they found their way to the mattress, and engaged in some more fucking that didn't - or maybe that did after all - matter.

*** End ***


End file.
